December 31, 2020 Show with Peter Robinson on “Lessons to be Learned from 18th Century Anglicanism Today”

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this last day of 2020, praise be to God, on December 31st, 2020, and I am thrilled to wrap up the new year with an excellent guest that is a returning guest to this program, someone whom

I always find utterly fascinating and edifying and always proves to be a superb and very knowledgeable guest, his name is

Peter Robinson, and he's the presiding bishop of the United Episcopal Church of North America, and today we are going to be addressing lessons to be learned from 18th century

Anglicanism today, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Bishop Peter Robinson.

Hello, Chris, it's nice to be back. Amen, and if you could, let our listeners know about the

United Episcopal Church of North America. The United Episcopal Church is one of that plethora of small

Anglican denominations that split away from the Episcopal Church as it embraced progressive theology in the 1960s and the 1970s, but unlike most of the groups that broke away from the

Episcopal Church in that period, we have a tendency towards what

I would call the Protestant side of Anglicanism, so the orientation is towards the

Thirty -Nine Articles and the Prayer Book, and towards the Reformation rather than the Oxford Movement.

Great, well that's always good to hear, and having been one who was rescued spiritually and theologically out of Roman Catholicism by the grace and mercy of our

Sovereign Lord, I'm very happy to know that you are not leaning towards the

Oxford Movement and are truly a reflection of Protestant Anglicanism, and if anybody wants to find out more about the

United Episcopal Church of North America, you can go to their website, which is...

UnitedEpiscopalChurch .org, I think. Actually, I have UnitedEpiscopal .org. Okay, both work.

Oh, okay, good. And since I'm looking at one that works, I'll repeat that one,

UnitedEpiscopal .org, and you can find if there are congregations in your area in that denomination as well, in addition to finding out other things about this fine denomination which is neither

Anglo -Catholic nor is it leftist and apostate, which unfortunately is probably the most typical thing that people think of when they hear about an

Episcopal Church, which is tragic. Well, you wanted to address today lessons to be learned from 18th century

Anglicanism today. Now, what is unique about the 18th century with an

Anglicanism that made you want to focus on that particular century in our discussion today?

I think this is a little bit of a case of me being the salmon in that most people, even today, give the 18th century a bad rap, but what they are forgetting is that there were three significant movements in the 18th century, the first of which is the battle against infidelity, which takes place in the 1720s, the 1730s, and the 1740s.

In the English universities at the end of the 17th century, there was a resurgence of what was described at the time as Arianism, but probably would be best described as a form of Sasanianism, and it attracted many well -known names.

For instance, Sir Isaac Newton was on the fringes of that movement. And there was a very definite drift away from orthodoxy on the part of the university clergy during the early part of the 18th century, and that's beaten back by people like Joseph Butler, who wrote the analogy of religion and nature revealed, which is one of the major philosophical defenses of Christianity from the 18th century, and Daniel Waterland, who wrote defenses of the doctrine of the

Holy Trinity, the doctrine of the sacraments, and so on in the 1720s and the 1730s as part of this process of defending

Christian orthodoxy. Now, you mentioned Arianism. That is probably a more well -known heresy to our listeners, probably because the

Jehovah's Witnesses, well, depending upon where you live, but there are areas, especially where I was from,

I was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and we were swarming with Jehovah's Witnesses who deny the deity of Jesus Christ, which would be a key tenet of Arianism.

So what would be the key tenets of this heresy of which you speak? Well, it was kind of a catch -all name for unorthodox views on the

Holy Trinity. A lot of them were held with a subordinationist heresy.

You get some who lean towards adoptionism, others modalism.

There isn't really a consistent heretical position. The best -known exponent of that position was

Samuel Clarke, who seems to have been a classical Arian.

So he subordinated the Son to the Father, denied the full divinity of Christ, and generally tried to base his arguments on the

Synoptic Gospels. And he was taken apart by Daniel Waterland in a couple of quite masterly but impossible to read works that were published in the late 1720s.

And this was one of the key controversies, because even a century later, when the

Oxford movement is going off the rails in the late 1830s, early 1840s, they referred to some of Newman's methodology of logic -chopping his way through the

Thirty -Nine Articles as being very similar to Samuel Clarke's a century before.

And it's this sort of taking phrases and sentences in isolation and essentially trying to make the text mean what you want it to mean, not what it actually means.

And that was really where Clarke, Whiston, and others of that school were heading.

They wanted not just freedom of inquiry, but freedom to manipulate the text however they wanted.

And they also led attempts to try and loosen the terms of subscription to the

Thirty -Nine Articles. And this was to be a recurrent theme throughout the 18th century, particularly in the two universities.

One of the things you have to remember about Oxford and Cambridge in the 18th century, and indeed up until the 1850s, is that they were very largely clerical corporations.

Most of those who taught at Oxford and Cambridge were ordained clergymen of the

Church of England. And better than half of those who graduated from Oxford and Cambridge were destined for the clergy.

So there was a distinct clerical atmosphere to Oxford and Cambridge, and both universities required subscription to the

Thirty -Nine Articles. At Oxford it was before you matriculated, and at Cambridge it was before you received your degree.

So any attempt to loosen the terms of subscription in the 18th century within the universities was also an attack on the orthodoxy of the

Church of England. And this is why the controversy between Clarke and Waterland was so important.

And the ongoing attempts that were consistently defeated to loosen the terms of subscription within the universities, they're a sign really of the liberal temperament of the 18th century.

And it's interesting that they don't really succeed. If anything,

Christianity in England during the 18th century becomes more conservative. Because once the

Aryans, to use the term, have been defeated intellectually at the beginning of the century, the next big movement to come along is evangelicalism.

And evangelicalism gets its doctrinal foundation in the

Church of England from restating the theology of the Reformation -era formularies.

This is why eventually there is a split between Anglican evangelicals and Methodists. Because the

Methodists tend to the Arminian side of the argument, the Church evangelicals tend towards the

Reformed side of the argument. And if anything, the tendency of the 18th century is yes, there's a very strong liberal movement in the first half of the century, and then the breaks go on.

And with evangelicalism capturing the popular imagination, with a resurgence of the old high churchmen under George III, and then the tremendous psychological shock of the

French Revolution, which was not the sort of gentlemanly effort that you had over here,

English Christianity became more firmly orthodox during the 18th century.

So a lot of this bolstering or reaffirming orthodoxy seems to have been produced out of the challenges of heretics.

Yeah, which historically has always been the pattern. Now if you could repeat that one figure who would seem to be a primary champion for orthodoxy

Daniel Waterland, 1683 to 1740. And a

Thirty -Nine Articles man, and a Reformed Anglican, I'm assuming. He wasn't Reformed, he was an older high churchman, and he was one of those who was a little bit wary of individual predestination, which is very typical of 18th century high churchmen.

They tend to conceive of predestination more in the context of God having an elect people.

Sort of like a Lutheran class election? Yes. In fact, one of the things that's a little bit difficult with Anglicanism is that because our formularies predate the full working out of the

Reformed position, the Thirty -Nine Articles do leave some room for sort of the

Lutheran view on predestination. Because the

Articles essentially come in that gap between the

Augsburg Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, the

Second Helvetic Confession. Right in the middle of that interval.

And that, from what I understand from confessional Protestant Anglicans, is the true via media, not a midway attempt for bringing peace between Rome and Protestantism, but between the two branches of Protestantism.

Yeah, I mean, it comes out of the moves that were made in the wake of the collapse of the

Small Caldic League in 1547 to sort of bring about a unified

Protestantism. And Cranmer, for example, was one of those who was trying to organize a sort of Protestant version of Trent and bring people like Philip Melanchthon, John Calvin, Johannes Brentz, bring them all together in the hopes of reconciling the

Reformed and the Lutheran traditions to present a united front against Roman Catholicism.

Now, there were various reasons why it didn't happen, one of which is quite simply that Edward VI died at a very inconvenient moment.

Some of the key people in Anglicanism, like Thomas Cranmer, were involved with that attempt to bring

Protestantism together. And that sort of has left its mark on Anglicanism to this day.

I always sort of have a little bit of a joke, and it's one of those things, don't take me too literally on this one.

The articles lean Reformed, the Book of Common Prayer leans a little bit more to the Lutheran side, particularly when you're looking at the

English book with its emphasis in the Communion service on the words of institution, which is very similar to how the

Communion is treated liturgically in the Lutheran Church. But also along with that, you have to be aware of the fact that church buildings and the ornaments of the ministers were treated in a fairly

Reformed way in England. I mean, out came the white wash bucket and away went the statues.

Mass vestments were abolished. And so what you have is a moderate Reformed Reformation.

But there was sort of one eye on reconciling the Lutherans. And I'm going to give our listeners our email address if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own.

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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USA. And we do have a listener. And this listener is choosing to remain anonymous.

He says, I have many friends within Anglicanism and Episcopalianism on both sides of the

Tiber River, as it were. Some are truly confessionally Protestant, and others are more of the

Romish -Oxford movement, Tractarian side of the issue. My question would be, even though I am leaning towards the

Protestant side of this dispute, I was wondering, why is it that the

Romish -Oxford movement began to rear its ugly head in the 19th century?

Where were they all along in the 18th century? They weren't. There really isn't much ancestry to the

Oxford movement. If you look at 18th century theology, even on the high church side, its basic framework of reference is reformed.

There are detailed differences. For example, it is reluctant to commit itself to anything other than the

Lutheran view of predestination. There are times when, in 18th century theology, you get a very strong emphasis on bishops as being a distinctive feature of Anglicanism, and also connection with the polity of the early church.

But really, the Tractarian theology is really a product of early 19th century

Romanticism. And a sort of yearning for, not just the patristic foundations of the church, but also an increasing appreciation of the

Middle Ages. And so, there is this tendency for cultural and aesthetic reasons to minimize the

Reformation. And they get into the business of picking the authorities that they like from the history of Anglicanism.

So they'll take a little passage from Jeremy Taylor, and a few little sentences from John Cosin, and a little bit of George Bull, and construct an argument, which if you compare it to the arguments of people like Cosin, Bull, Beveridge, the

Caroline Divines, actually is not connected to their theology much at all.

About 25 years ago, there was a groundbreaking study done by Peter Knuckles, who was a research librarian at,

I think, Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, called the

Oxford Movement in Context. And essentially the conclusion he reached, and I hope

I'm not doing his work an injustice here, is that it really is very difficult to trace anything like the

Oxford Movement in Anglicanism prior to 1830.

You get some extreme high churchmen like the non -jurors, who approximate to Oxford Movement opinions on things like baptism or regeneration, but you don't get the whole program.

And this is where the Oxford Movement really is quite radical, in the sense that it doesn't really have an inheritance from the past in a continuous sense.

It's an attempt to turn the clock back and invent a distinctively

English Catholicism. And I'm trying to recall from our conversations in our previous interviews, whether you yourself were a high churchman or a low churchman, it seems that the majority of men that I've had on this program that are thoroughly reformed

Anglicans and very Protestant are surprisingly high churchmen.

Although I do have some friends who are self -described low church rectors and so on.

Where would you be in that realm? My expression is I like my copes and wafer cakes.

So I like a bit of ceremonial providing it conforms to the prayer book.

And also being musically inclined, I love the English cathedral choral tradition.

So I'm a mild high churchman, definitely not an Anglo -Catholic.

And it's interesting also that you said that the Book of Common Prayer appears to be more

Lutheran leaning in its emphasis, and the Thurgo and Calvinists I know in Anglicanism are all strong prayer book men.

So it's interesting. Yeah, one of the things you have to do a little bit with Anglicanism is you have to, you see the only real strong disagreements in the 16th century between Lutherans and Calvinists, there was a difference of emphasis on predestination.

And Lutheran theology localizes the real presence in the elements.

Whereas Reformed theology, at least if you are following Butzer and Calvin, tends to make the sacramental union take place not in the elements, but in the faithful communicant.

So a liturgy that would suit moderate Reformed people is not necessarily going to be all that different to one that would suit moderate

Lutherans. And that's kind of what happened, not just in England, but also in certain parts of Germany.

So for example, certain Lutheran churches like that of Württemberg use a liturgy which rather resembles that of the

Swiss Reformed church. Of course geographical proximity has a lot to do with it,

I mean you only just have to pop over the border and you're in Bern. But there is this sort of middle party.

A lot of the German Reformed were not hardline

Calvinists, they were really Philippists who got sick of being beaten up by the self -proclaimed

Orthodox Lutherans. Huh. Well we have to go to our first break right now.

And again, if anybody else would like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the full two hours today with a little less than 90 minutes to go is

Bishop Peter Robinson, Presiding Bishop of the United Episcopal Church of North America.

We are addressing lessons to be learned from 18th century Anglicanism today. And our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

If you have a question, chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence.

We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, Why does the 18th century have such a bad rap against it when it produced at least two of the greatest minds of Christendom, which would, in my opinion, be

George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards? And let me even add a third, even though I am far from being

Arminian, John Wesley. I think a lot of it is the old, old problem in church history that the 18th century was fairly heavily worked over by the

Victorians. And they perceived the church revivals of the 19th century, starting with the

Second Great Awakening and going through, in Anglicanism, of course we have the

Oxford Movement, the whole series of revivals that took place in the 19th century, the evangelical side of the church, they sort of saw that as being the gold standard.

And they fell into the trap that often happens with social historians, which is they tend to see their grandfathers and their great -grandfathers as having neglected the church, society, whatever, to create the necessity for the reform movements that they are participating in.

But of course, one of the reasons I think the 18th century has to be re -evaluated is it did produce the first great flood of evangelicalism in the

English -speaking world. So you've got George Whitefield, you've got John and Charles Wesley, and you have the steady growth of the evangelical movement in England and in North America all through the second half of the 18th century.

And one of the things that I think drove the certainly

Anglican church historians to play the 18th century down was it did start with this explosion of unorthodox opinions.

People like Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, who were definitely theologically out to lunch.

And of course you've got the whole problem of deism later in the century, which sucked in people like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

But alongside this you have the great church revival in the form of evangelicalism.

In the 18th century in England it's all really inside the

Church of England except where it spills over into groups like the relatively few remaining

Presbyterians in England, similar to the Congregationalists, the Baptists. Evangelicalism is mainly a

Church of England movement in the 19th century. Sorry, in the 18th century. It's not until the beginning of the 19th century that there's a decisive break between the

Methodists and the Church of England. And that comes, if anything, because of the desire for local preachers in the

Methodist church to celebrate the sacraments. But even their

Methodist practice in England in the 19th century was far from uniform. One of the warnings that was issued to curates in my home parish was always expect a lot of extra communicants on the first Sunday of the month because that's when the

Methodists come to the parish church for communion. And this continued well into the 19th century.

But the big contribution, when you strip all the negative propaganda away, you can't ignore

Whitefield and the Wesleys. You cannot ignore the next generation, which is people like Isaac and Joseph Milner, William Wilberforce, you've got the

Venn family, and you've got this growing connection of evangelicals within the

Church of England and also what we may as well call the fringes within Methodism who are putting forward as a challenge to the society of their day a vital form of Christianity.

You know, it isn't simply an exercise. Intellectual exercise is a way of living.

And it involves definite commitments to live a godly life, definite commitments to read the scripture and to live it out day by day.

And that was something that challenged convention and challenged the rather easygoing

Christianity light that had grown up in the wake of the English Civil War.

And that's really the big contribution of the 18th century. The thing that I think the 19th century could not appreciate about the 18th century was just how much got done.

Because they were reaping the benefits of the reforms that the evangelicals of the 18th century had worked for.

So, for example, the evangelicals in England were particularly strong on ending the slave trade.

And they were also involved with early movements of factory reform, reducing the amount of cruelty to animals.

There's a whole bunch of practical everyday societal reforms that go alongside this great revival in religion.

What the Victorians were apt to forget is that Victorian society would not have existed without the reforms initiated largely by 18th century evangelicals.

We do have another listener. We have

Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania who wants to know, when you say there was a resurgence of modalism in the 18th century, were these conscious believers in that heresy or were they just sloppy at defining the

Trinity as something prevalent even today? There's a conviction on the part of some that the doctrine of the

Holy Trinity was a later addition to Christianity.

It didn't quite reflect the biblical view. And in the hands of the more vigorous, it became

Arianism. Those who were sloppier, I think, tended to go towards modalism.

But it's a definite move away from orthodoxy. And you can see it to some extent coming through in the first attempt at producing an

American prayer book in 1786. The creeds are very much downplayed.

The Trinitarian formulas in the prayer book are very much minimized. And that's part of this reaction, not so much against the doctrine of the

Holy Trinity, but against theology in general. Because 18th century liberalism was basically a matter of do good works and live a good life and go to church, which

I think is pretty much how Christian liberalism has been, or vaguely

Christian liberalism has been all through its history. Again, you have the first consciously

Unitarian congregations growing up at the end of the 18th century. You have King's Chapel in Boston, which rewrites the prayer book to eliminate the traditional

Trinitarian formulas. So it is part of this sort of anti -theological subtext that you have in the 18th century church.

If that makes any sense. Yeah. And let's see here.

We have John in Bangor, Maine, who says you described

England and the Church of England specifically in the 18th century as becoming more conservative.

Was this a genuine, vibrant, born -again form of conservativism or more prone towards dead orthodoxy?

Both. It's a little bit of a...

Yeah, it's... You've got both going on.

I mean, I don't necessarily regard orthodoxy as necessarily being dead, which is, if you study late 18th century high churchmanship, it is beginning to have its own variety of revival.

But if you make the assumption that living

Christianity means an emotional evangelical revivalist -style response to Christianity, you're not going to get that on the high side of the

Church of England. It is going to be on that side of the church a conscious attempt to live a

Christian life according to the precepts of the Church of England. The evangelicals, in a sense, are the more emotional side, and they are growing in the late 18th century.

Whereas in the 1750s evangelicals have been thought of as being for want of a better way of putting it, a small band of eccentrics.

By the late 1700s, they've become pretty well established.

I mean, just to look at the University of Cambridge, you have Isaac Milner, who is the president of Queen's College, who is quite consciously using his position as a college head to train suitable men of evangelical background for the ministry.

You've got Charles Simeon across at King's College, who is organizing his,

I think it was Friday evening meetings, where undergraduates would get together to study with him in preparation for taking

Holy Orders. In the same way, across at Oxford, early in the 19th century, because really when you talk about the 18th century in English history and culture, you're really talking the long 18th century, which is 1689 to 1832.

A few years later in Oxford, you have William Van Mildert and then

Frodsham Hodgson revitalizing studies for the ministry there.

By actually, and this will sound very strange to modern ears, by actually getting professors to lecture, which was not that characteristic of the

English universities in the 18th century. They were teaching institutions, but most of the teaching was done through tutorials, small group learning.

Oxford and Cambridge still very heavily slanted towards tutorials. Lectures give you the framework, tutorials and reading is what actually gives you the knowledge.

We have to get to our midway break right now, and please be patient with us, folks, because as always, the midway break is the longer than normal break that we have in the show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show, because they are required of the

FCC to localize this program to Lake City, Florida, and therefore they have to air their own public service announcements and other local things in order to localize the show to Lake City, Florida, geographically.

Please be patient with us, as I said, as this is a longer break. While they air their localized information, we air our globally heard commercials, so please use this time wisely by writing down as much of the information as possible for as many of our advertisers as possible so that you can more frequently patronize them and successfully patronize them as well, because remember, folks, we want our advertisers to keep renewing their contracts because we absolutely, positively depend on the finances that come in through our advertisers to exist.

We cannot exist without our advertisers. So please, even if it means just responding to them by thanking them for sponsoring this program, when you can't actually purchase something from them or use their services or visit their churches or what have you, at least write to them or call them or email them and thank them for sponsoring this program.

I'll also use this time, obviously, to send in a question to Bishop Peter Robinson, and we are discussing lessons to be learned from 18th century

Anglicanism today, and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and of course, since Bishop Robinson is very knowledgeable on the whole subject of Anglicanism and theology and doctrine and church history, you could broaden the spectrum of your questions to be more than just the 18th century, but we would obviously prefer it if you can focus on that era.

My email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages with more Peter Robinson. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio depends upon the financial support of fine

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Lessons to be Learned from 18th Century Anglicanism today I just have another appeal to you folks

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Anglicanism today and that's chrisarnzion at gmail .com chrisarnzion at gmail .com

and Bishop Robinson we have

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania who wants to know obviously the

American Revolution was a war that erupted in the 18th century on theological lines how did that divide brothers and sisters in Christ who are part of the

Anglican Communion um it really depended a lot on your background politics if you went towards the

Whigs you were probably more supportive of the revolution than if you went towards the

Tories and there isn't really a clear churchmanship divide on who supports the

Whigs and who supports the Tories in that period um really the

American Revolution did not have the sort of shock effect on English society that the

French Revolution did um I think there was a sense amongst some

Anglicans that some sort of independence of the American colonies was inevitable others took it as a kind of an affront to the crown um but you know there was not the horror about the

American Revolution that greeted the French because the

French Revolution basically the oldest monarchy in Europe disappeared within a matter of months and that made folks terribly nervous you know it was really we haven't had an event you know you know the coronavirus panic gets somewhere close to it in the sense of the way in which it affected everybody but you know it was a real shock uh you know the

French monarchy which had been there since the 6th century ends and France which had been you know one of the great

Catholic countries of Europe declares itself officially over Christianity for a few years so you know by comparison the

American Revolution was a bit of a storm in a teacup well uh we have let's see here

C .J. from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York says on a previous Iron Sharpens Iron radio program

I heard a debate between two confessional conservative

Protestant and Reformed Anglicans who differed on the ashes for Ash Wednesday one believed that it was just a remnant of potpourri that should be ignored and abolished one thought it was a completely fine tradition to maintain within confessional

Protestant Anglicanism I was wondering where you stood on the issue and if there is any consensus of the practice in the 18th century since as you were saying earlier the

Oxford or more Catholic movement of Anglicanism was absent in that century well ashes didn't come back into Anglicanism until the end of the 19th century so in the 18th century you know it just was not part of the tradition the traditional way of observing

Ash Wednesday in the Anglican tradition was to read a little service called the culmination which became the penitential office in the

American prayer book along with morning prayer and the litany and the first part of the communion service so ashes aren't there simply are just not there in the 18th century they sort of my expression is crept in through the back door with the second phase of the

Anglo -Catholic movement in the 1870s and the 1880s where they started borrowing sacramentals from the

Roman Catholic Church and some people are more accepting of that than others

I'm not a big enthusiast but my church likes it there's a real variety of attitudes and it's something that's not laid down in the prayer book there's a good deal of liberty on the issue and we have let's see here

I was just looking at an interesting question a moment ago oh

Harrison in Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania wants to know is there a continued

I'm trying to I think he misspelled something here is there a continued hesitancy upon the part of confessional

Anglicans towards Puritanism yes is the short answer because there's a little bit of well there's a definite division amongst

Anglican evangelicals in their evaluation of the Puritans at times they come across as being almost anti -Anglican certainly when you get the more radical types like John Cotton their desire to remold the

Church of England in their own image certainly doesn't help them win the many fans on the other hand some of the earlier figures that are associated with what was to become

Puritanism people like Edmund Grindle are very much part of the weft and weave of what became

Anglicanism so sort of a whole range of opinions some people are real admirers of the

Puritans others have sort of taken or leave them others are strictly speaking ambivalent towards them now would that be more in the realm of strict adherence to the regulative principle of worship or does it even go into the theology?

essentially it depends the trouble with Puritanism is they're a little bit of a it's a catch -all term and you know it can vary from someone who was basically on board with the

Elizabethan settlement but wasn't too keen on wearing a surplus through to folks who really wanted to abolish

Episcopacy and the Liturgy and transform the Church of England into a

Presbyterian Church you've got that full range of possibilities within Puritanism in general

I think there is a tendency on the part of Reformed Anglicans towards the more moderate forms of Reformed Theology and the

Puritans who tend to be a little bit more on the hardline side are not so sympathetic to Reformed Anglicans as they would be to say someone in the

Orthodox Presbyterian tradition I don't even know if there is a consensus but what would be the attitudes of most

Anglicans with whom you share fellowship over someone like John Owen there's sort of an ambivalence there there's admiration but there's also a sense that there were times when he was skirting dangerously close to throwing the baby out with the bath water in the sense that there's sort of an anti -traditional streak there that doesn't really sit well with the

Anglican tendency to just sit back and let things find their own place, reform the things that it is necessary to reform and leave the rest so I think

John Owen sort of suffers a little bit the same fate but in a more extreme form to William Perkins Perkins always has the problem with Anglicans that he's a little too

Puritan for the Anglicans and then the corollary of that is he can be a little too

Anglican for some of the descendants of the Puritans but Owen, there would definitely be a certain amount of ambivalence there

Now what would be the attitude for the most part toward one of Owen's friends who was not identical to Owen, especially in regard to churchmanship because he was

Baptistic but I'm referring to John Bunyan who did fill

Owen's pulpit on a number of occasions and was greatly admired by John Owen even though he had little to none or little to no formal education meaning

Bunyan of course One thing that was interesting is the aforementioned

Stephen H. Ting that I brought up earlier when I took a tour of St.

George's Episcopal Church in Manhattan I saw a stained glass window that was created in tribute to the

Pilgrim's Progress So where was where is

Bunyan in regard to the attitudes of most

Anglicans with whom you enjoy fellowship? Well the Pilgrim's Progress is regarded as one of the great classics of English spirituality and that's really where Bunyan fits in as a devotional writer rather than his own particular theology and that's very much the way in which he is regarded.

The problem with both Owen and Bunyan from the Anglican point of view is that they were non -conformists and ultimately rejected

Anglican polity and that always kind of creates a little bit of cultural difficulty

Part of that is that Anglican evangelicals have always suffered a little bit from being regarded as being not quite proper

Anglicans and they were perceived in a sense as being disloyal because they worked to a certain degree with what in England we will call

Protestant descent so Presbyterianism in particular to a lesser degree the

Congregationalists the Methodists and so on. They always put a little bit of a question mark over the loyalties of the

Church because really from the point of view of the Church of England certainly still in the 18th century the

English Civil War was a great trauma The prayer book had been outlawed the bishops had been deprived of their seats

Anglican congregations that were meeting secretly always ran the risk of being busted up by Cromwell's troopers

There was a very definite lean against Anglicanism during the

Commonwealth and of course afterwards there is a certain amount of payback time with things like the

Great Ejection and the rather uncompromising attitude of Charles II's regime towards Protestant descent so there was always that little sense of them and us and as a result of that some of the later

Puritans like John Owen do fall under that sort of little bit of discomfort with the attitudes they took to what are perceived by Anglicans as being non -controversial things like the liturgy and episcopacy

And as far as 18th century Anglicanism what do you think can we learn if it were to be applied as a parallel to what the church of the 21st century is facing and how we should be responding to the certain unique things that are confronting us today

Two things that were very important in the 18th century church was the influence of individuals upon individuals

Both the Orthodox High Church Party and also the Evangelicals worked very much by creating networks

Not big formal organizations but individuals taking care that Orthodox Theology was passed on and that men were formed in the tradition to carry it on One of the things were a little bit too fond of today is technology and there's always a danger we lose sight of some of that basic discipling that needs to be done in order for the church to be really solid

And that was something that happened in the 18th century. If you look at a lot of the early Evangelicals for example, people like the

Milners Thomas Robinson William Wilberforce the

Thorntons were all connected to each other either through whole grammar school or through the city itself and it's by creating these networks of influence that Evangelicalism was able to spread.

Similarly the Orthodox High Church Party had its networks of connections and the influence of the individual upon others is the example of a devout life is something that we should never underestimate

Also, the other thing that was very important in 18th century certainly 18th century

Anglicanism was scholarship The maintenance maintenance of an

Orthodox view of the Bible and the early fathers and just making sure that those who were teaching are properly educated

There's no substitute for a minister being properly educated in the

Bible and in systematic theology because that's the foundation for your preaching ministry and they begin to make that happen through using existing educational institutions for a better end

These days probably we have to step outside of what is existing and form our own new networks

That's a couple of things I would take away from the 18th century The third thing is no matter how far gone society may seem there is always the possibility, even the probability when the time is right that the

Holy Spirit will move and produce a revival in religion So although things look very black at the moment they may not, you know, it may just be the darkness before the dawn

We don't know, it's all in God's hands We have an anonymous listener who wants to know is there any legitimate reason in your opinion that remains for a minister to remain within the mainline

Church of England or Episcopal Church here in the United States And I'm assuming he or she is asking about a biblically sound minister because obviously there's plenty of reasons why somebody who is more concerned over a career or political attachments might remain in those churches but as far as somebody who's and I'm assuming that this would be a part of the question but somebody who's theologically sound, confessionally faithful, biblically faithful especially

The Church of England there are still networks within the Church of England that allow you to remain orthodox within the structure

But I would not trust them to last much longer Within the

Episcopal Church I think the jig is up I think that the institution itself is controlled by progressive theology and a progressive agenda and that there are a few parishes that hang on with an orthodox witness like St.

George's New York But they are intensely dependent on and this may seem an odd way of putting it the bishop leaving them alone to get on with the ministry that they want to do

There's always an element within American Episcopalianism of what I would call quasi -congregationalism

In that because of the way the church is structured congregations do have a fair amount of autonomy and that is something that has been connived at by the

Anglo -Catholics and the Evangelicals because they were the net beneficiaries. If you had a high church bishop he couldn't come in and start ordering you around if you were an

Evangelical and the same thing within reason applied if you were an

Anglo -Catholic facing a Protestant bishop His rights to dictate things micromanage things at parish level were pretty limited

I have witnessed in other denominations that have really for the most part have collapsed into apostasy but I have seen how you will have certain congregations within these denominations that are predominantly sold out to leftism you will have congregations of ethnic minorities whether they are

Hispanic whether they are Black whether they are Asian that are conservative or biblically faithful and yet are left alone by the denominations and I'm assuming just out of fear to appear to be racist by bossing around those who are of these ethnic minority groups is that something that you witness in Anglicanism and Episcopalianism as well?

Not perhaps to the same degree one of the old jokes amongst

Anglicans is there are certain parishes bishops cannot afford to annoy and it comes down to the way in which dioceses are funded and certain well endowed parishes like Trinity Wall Street and St.

Thomas' Fifth Avenue get left alone because at the end of the day they're the ones who bankroll the bishop

So you're saying that that is a parish that is parishes that are still remaining biblically faithful?

No, what I'm saying is their parishes with a high likelihood have been left alone

Oh, ok and if you get the combination of orthodoxy and cold hard cash um those parishes will be left alone by the bishops because it is in their interest to do so.

Also it does give a sort of impression that orthodoxy is ok because the progressives in charge say so But you're relying on at that point you're relying on favours and that's not really a sound foundation on which to build

Right, and I'm assuming is one of the reasons for the existence of the

United Episcopal Church of North America is because there is a great danger and some would even say a serious disobedience in being unevenly yoked

Yeah One of the things that is very noticeable in the way the

Episcopal Church declined is that it kind of went from the middle so kind of the middle levels of the church theological seminaries particularly bought into the liberal theology of the 1950s and the 1960s and then gradually that went both up and down It went down in the sense that people educated in the liberal theology of the 1950s and 1960s went into the parishes and started propagating that point of view and also as they got older they went upwards because they began to be elected bishops and the initial impulse

I think towards liberalism particularly within the Episcopal Church was the need to be intellectually respectable would be my way of putting it

So they embraced higher criticism of the Bible they embraced liberal theology

At Christmas time, I'm always reminded of Phillips Brooks because of Oh Little Town of Bethlehem Phillips Brooks in the last 35 years of the 19th century was the big promoter of liberal

Protestantism within the Episcopal Church and he is almost a representative figure in the death of the evangelical movement within the

Episcopal Church because he comes from a New England congregational background he's

Harvard educated, he goes to Virginia Seminary as an evangelical he's ordained as an evangelical he starts reading the new theology that's coming out of Germany in the early 1860s and he embraces this liberal

Protestantism that's being coming out of the German universities and he becomes very much one of the key figures in American Episcopal liberalism and one of the things that is characteristic of Brooks all through his ministries, his style remains evangelical he's one of the great preachers of the age although he goes in for a little bit more color and movement than the average evangelical like Stephen Ting he's still recognizably evangelical in style but the content is liberal

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Welcome back and Bishop Robinson I forgot to ask you before the break the song

A Little Town of Bethlehem was that written by Phillips Brooks when he was still an evangelical or was that written when he became a proponent of liberalism

He was definitely moving firmly into liberalism by that point Okay, well

I shall remember never to sing that song again Well, one of the things that's pretty characteristic of Phillips Brooks what

I jokingly call a conservative liberal is that his religious focus is incarnational and one of the things that really creates problems with his theology of the atonement is that he leans a long way towards thinking that humanity in order to be saved needs an example an example not a savior so he has a low view of the atonement

Right and that obviously was a key tenant of the whole social gospel movement

Yes and you see he's pretty much the era of what

I jokingly would describe as club Christianity where you know the big city

Episcopal churches had multiple organizations covering absolutely every aspect of daily life and also became very involved in a at that stage kind of a non -political way with the sort of progressive late 19th century early 20th century progressive political agenda so you know the beginnings of the women's movement quite a few liberal clerics of the late 19th early 20th century displayed an interest in eugenics and that's the sort of strange brew that you get in late 19th early 20th century liberalism

Yeah which is why Margaret Sanger had remained for decades a hero of liberalism in spite of the fact that she was irrefutably a queen of racism

Oh yeah I mean at the end of the day what you're dealing with Margaret Sanger is the same thing as you're dealing with H .S.

Chamberlain which is social Darwinism Right and you know the desire to eliminate the undesirable from society and if you could

I want to make sure that before we leave you summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today in regard to lessons to be learned from 18th century

Anglicanism today Three things first of all the importance of forming networks you know individuals influence individuals the second thing is the importance of education and the third thing is no matter how difficult the situation may appear at the moment there is always the possibility maybe even the probability that God in his providence will turn it round Now as far as the first what are the obstacle courses that you have seen that might thwart or at least dissuade someone from being more energetic and zealous in forming networks

I think in some respects technology is both friend and enemy on that in that personal influence in the sense of getting to know people face to face it's a funny thing to be talking about in Corona year but I suppose apt in a way getting to know people face to face the actual physical local church is extremely important you know you can't really successfully take

Christianity online for any length of time it's a tool that we can use to spread the message but at the end of the day it's the local church it's the influence of Christians upon Christians that's vitally important Amen well

I would like to make sure that all of our listeners have all the contact information that they would need to get in touch with you and also to find congregations within your denomination in their area you have unitedepiscopal .org

unitedepiscopal .org and are there any other ways of contacting you or other urls that you'd like to share after that you are down to familiar old things like email which is other contact information telephone numbers and so on it's all given on the website you will also find a list of parishes there great and that's unitedepiscopal .org

well folks as we are now entering into New Years Eve and we'll be entering into a new year very shortly

I want to let you know that one of our sponsors the

Historical Bible Society which we depend upon to exist as well the financial support that they provide is absolutely essential so we are hoping that you the listener will return the favor to them thank them for sponsoring this show by helping them one of the things that they are doing to bless the listeners in the

Iron Trump and Zion Radio audience who bless them is they have developed a beautiful booklet a 44 page book on the genealogy of Jesus Christ that comes directly from it's a facsimile or facsimiles plural directly from a first edition 1611

King James Bible that is among the collection of the Historical Bible Society and this is a really beautiful reproduction a 44 page book on the genealogies of Jesus that you can have for a $35 donation to the

Historical Bible Society and if you go to historicalbiblesociety .org

historicalbiblesociety .org you will see a video right immediately on the screen or at least a slide show of this beautiful booklet this 44 page book that should entice you to send in a donation to them as soon as you can and whenever you respond to our advertisers remember you are actually helping us to remain on the air as well because we need our advertisers to exist and therefore always it's a very important aspect of this is that whenever you respond to an advertiser you tell them that you heard about them from Chris on Iron and Sharpens Iron radio and again that's historicalbiblesociety .org

historicalbiblesociety .org and is there any speaking engagement even in spite of the coronavirus pandemic or any other special event or even zoom meeting or what have you that you'd like to alert our listeners about Bishop Robinson?

No, I think we just pretty much carry on as we usually do with vague interruptions from coronavirus and COVID -19 and all the panicking that goes along with it.

Great, well I look forward to your frequent return God willing in 2021 to Iron and Sharpens Iron radio as our guest.

I hope everybody listens has a very safe, happy and healthy New Year's Eve and especially the

New Year ahead and that you receive far more blessings than 2020 may have brought your way and I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater